


The Hazbin Hotel Holiday Special!

by JackFettGames



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Have a Happy Holiday or Two, MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS, Nifty Disappears for the Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21979159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackFettGames/pseuds/JackFettGames
Summary: Angel just wants to listen to "Feliz Navidad."
Relationships: Charlie Magne/Vaggie
Kudos: 54





	The Hazbin Hotel Holiday Special!

**Author's Note:**

> Happy belated Christmas! I hope this story is still pleasurable, and thank you for reading it!

Once again, it was Christmas, Husk recalled, sitting at the bar in a half lean, rocking with a slight motion, cradling a bottle of celebratory vodka. But why was it celebratory? What made today so different from the other, less meaningful days of his existence? Husk kept attempting to convince himself that the choice to host Christmas on December 25th was completely arbitrary. But his attempts bore no fruit, not even with a shot— straight from the bottle— to accompany them. There had to be some reason why this specific day was Christmas, something attractive about its timing, or its aesthetic, or something else that Husk had no talent for sensing.

In that vein, why was Husk so unwilling to accept that the day selected for Christmas sprouted from a random choice? Plenty of choices are random, so why not this one? Except, no, not so many choices are random, thinking about it. One will always have biases based on their past experiences, based on those events one caused and those one simply witnessed, with no input whatsoever. And those biases are the basis of one’s choices, whether through conscious deliberation or unconscious preferences.

Is there even such a thing as an original idea? We, as conscious beings, are enslaved to our minds, enslaved to all the information we store within them, with no knowledge or direction beside what we know upon our inception, our birth, and what we learn. Aren’t our ideas, our very thoughts, just a jumble of these two wells of information, a collage of memory, vivid and repressed, pressed and condensed? And if we can’t trust our thoughts to be completely our own, then who are we? Does our ultimate definition not originate from within ourselves, but rather, from outside influences that impart it unto us?

“I want to listen to ‘Feliz Navidad.’” Angel, sitting across the bar from Husk with his chin in his hand, interjected into the silence. Husk blinked and took another swig of vodka to prevent himself from falling back into that pit of despair.

Angel picked his head up to glance around the hotel, now consumed by his fleeting desire. His eyes stopped once they crossed paths with the one person he wanted to see, standing rigid at the end of the lobby opposite the front doors with that ever present, ever wide grin. “Hey, Al! You have access to a bunch of the radios down here, right?”

Alastor turned with a snap from the unending joy he received when analyzing the lack of demons entering the hotel. “Why yes, my dear fellow! I wouldn’t be such a quality host if I didn’t have such power and sway in the field of audio entertainment!”

Angel pushed himself off of his barstool and sashayed over to Alastor, leaning two of his arms against the back wall once he reached it. His other two rested on his firmly placed hip. “Okay. So, what’ll it cost for you to play ‘Feliz Navidad?’”

“Oh! Would you like to make…” With a second’s pause, Alastor made arrangements for the event, mentally reaching to dim the lights surrounding the two of them and igniting his signature, sinister green lights. “... a deal?” If it were possible, Alastor’s grin would have sharpened its edge in anticipation.

“No, no, no.” Angel dismissed the offer offhand with a bored, well practised gesture. Alastor definitely put the hotel residents through plenty of exercise when it came to refusing deals with powerful demons. “I can offer ya one week when I don’t harass you at all, though.”

Normally, Alastor would have insisted that they make a deal out of it anyway. The image and attitude of a firm deal maker was integral to the constitution of a notorious demon, after all. But Angel’s offer enticed him, even without a blood signature. Perhaps he would let this favor slide, and enjoy the promise of relaxation in a world without Angel Dust’s innuendos for one whole week.

“Alright, dear listener!” Alastor’s eyes transfigured into radio dials, red with a black needle, and they turned until tuning into just the right station to fulfill Angel’s whim.

The song had barely played its first ten chords before a pained screech rang from an upper level of the hotel. Hundreds of thousands of screams of a similar caliber gusted through Hell every day, like snowflakes in an eternal, continuous blizzard, so this particular one didn’t garner much notice until the banging footsteps that followed it reached Alastor, attempting to tackle him as he brushed them aside.

“Turn. That. Song. Off.” It wasn’t unusual to see Vaggie annoyed with something, even moderately angered, but seeing her seething, enraged— that was a rarity. “I’ve heard that damned song too many times, in my life and—” Vaggie noticed the glee spreading itself across Angel’s face, widening his mouth into a grin and lighting up his eyes as he watched her. “ANGEL!” Vaggie’s eyes lit fires blazing hotter than those of Hell, which currently resided in the fueling station down the street and to the left.

“What fun it is to piss you off.” Angel molded his grin into a smirk. And all the while, Alastor continued to play the song. He couldn’t provide two favors in a row without a deal attached, now. He still had to preserve his notoriety.

“It’s getting dangerously close to the day I double-kill you.” Vaggie’s glare tempered itself into a smolder, hoping to witness Angel choke on its smoke.

A second demon dashed into the lobby, and at that point, Alastor stopped the song. As much as tying deals to his actions built his image, he didn’t want to piss off the princess of Hell with explicit attempts to irritate her girlfriend. With any other demon, he wouldn’t assume such courtesy— They were all toys of his device, and he loved to remind them— but Alastor knew that being courteous with Charlie now would allow her to build her hopes for the hotel, then he would knock it down from its base, shattering her world and sparking the closest thing to euphoria that Alastor would ever experience down here. For now, Alastor simply waited for the day his strike would hurt the most, and thus, Charlie beheld the three demons in the lobby, hands innocently clasped before her, with a backdrop of complete silence.

“Hey! Um, what was that song?” Charlie had a remarkable ability to seem oblivious to the tensions rising between Angel, Vaggie, and Alastor, and she would never tell any of them that she had honed it specifically to lower said tension. “It sounded very nice!”

“It is the scourge of the holidays, repeated in a continuous loop until any meaning or joy it once held transformed into a bastardized version of—”

Angel pushed himself past Vaggie’s rant. “It’s a Christmas song, ‘Feliz Navidad.’ Pretty popular too.”

As well as aiming to diffuse the still-rising tension in the room, Charlie genuinely didn’t know what Angel meant. “Um, what’s ‘Christmas?’”

Three blank stares faced Charlie at that remark, the blank stares of former humans that didn’t quite understand, yet, that Charlie had never lived like them, in a society where the oncoming prospect of Christmas almost blotted out the sun with its multicolored lights and rampant commercialism. Vaggie was the first to accept her girlfriend’s inquiry as genuine and break the spreading silence. “It’s a holiday when traditional Christians choke others with their religion even more than usual. They’re always trying to indoctrinate people in their… less-than-up-to-date beliefs about their world and ours.” This conversation reminded Vaggie of when she first died and spent hours loudly cursing the fact that Hell was even real.

Angel cleared his throat, preparing to comment at Vaggie’s pause. “Okay, but a lot of human families celebrate it, even beyond those who strictly follow the ‘traditional Christian beliefs.’ It’s great to see people that celebrate it.”

Charlie felt excitement jump through her gut as she witnessed a wistful smile sprout on Angel’s face. Surely it indicated that Angel had a pure, sinless appreciation for “Christmas,” an appreciation onto which he could latch and ascend! “How did your family celebrate Christmas, Angel?”

Angel maintained the smile. “Well, I didn’t celebrate it with my family, but I did get a lot more work around the holidays. And the people who paid for me then were always the most fun and creative. One of them even kicked off my addiction to eggnog.”

Well, it was… a start for Angel. He was simply working his way to innocently enjoying something. Maybe they should talk about something else.

“Maybe I could be of service with describing Christmas?” Alastor’s eyes emitted a sharp gleam at the prospect of gaining control of the conversation, right when all the other demons had let their guard down.

“Alright, just don’t get too explicit—”

“Why, Miss Magne, Christmas is one of the purest and most innocent times of the year! There is nothing sexual about it! Everyone comes home and sits by the fire, warmed by the embers and the presence of their family.” Alastor carried his words along a grand flourish of his arms. “And the presents! Yes, Christmas is the annual occasion of gift giving for everyone! Boys and girls and all the rest excitedly anticipate this time of year, for the promise of their short lives’ desires wrapped in paper, twine, and a bow!”

Well, at least the way Alastor described Christmas made it seem an enjoyable purity, free of the sins and general problems that Vaggie and Angel ascribed to it. Maybe, if Charlie had Alastor host Christmas celebrations, they would be that much closer to their first ascension!

“Oh, and the lights! Multicolored, twinkling, and mesmerizing on cold winter nights, even when you use them to choke the life out of the husband!” Alastor’s gaze turned upward, beyond his current company, in the grand nature of his monologue. “And as the children scream for their father, the oven which roasts the Christmas ham is perfect to light the kerosene and throw off the police! Yes, and the cleaver can most efficiently hack up—” Alastor came back down to Hell, realizing himself. “Sorry, I lost myself for a second.”

On second thought, maybe the hotel would be okay without recognising Christmas. “Alright, ‘Christmas’ sounds like a very… interesting holiday! I’m glad you all enjoy it, but think about limiting your sins as you do.” Now, to change the subject. “Anyway, I wish you all a safe and happy Yule!”

The blank stares came again from Alastor and Angel, this time bathed in their nonrecognition of the holiday Charlie referenced. Vaggie, whom Charlie had invited to her family celebration of Yule in this past week, walked across the room and wrapped her arms around Charlie’s, noticing her discomfort. “You want to keep getting ready for the party tonight?”

Perhaps it was the red light of the sky, or the shock of Vaggie being gentle, but Charlie’s face seemed to assume a light blush. She emitted a small “yeah” and allowed Vaggie to lead her to the stairs.

Alastor watched them intently until they were out of earshot, then snapped back to Angel. “Dear fellow, did you commission me to play ‘Feliz Navidad’ to irritate Miss Magne’s girlfriend?”

“What? No! I just wanted to hear the song.”


End file.
